cters in the masterpieces of Sophocles, Shakspeare, or Schiller,
requires a mind of the same cast as that of those poets themselves. The
performer must throw himself, as it were, into the mind of the author;
identify himself with the piece to be represented; conceive the
character in reality, as the poet had portrayed it in words, and then
convey by acting this _second conception_ to the spectators. By this
double distillation of thought through the soul of genius, a finer and
more perfect creation is sometimes formed, than the efforts of any
single mind, how great soever, could have originally conceived. It may
well be doubted whether Shakspeare's conception of Lady Macbeth or
Desdemona was more perfect than Mrs Siddons's personation of them; or
whether the grandeur of Cato or Coriolanus, as they existed in the
original mind of Addison, or the patriarch of the English stage,
equalled Kemble's inimitable performances of these characters. Beautiful
as were the visions of Juliet and Rosalind which floated before the mind
of the Bard of Avon, it may be doubted if they excelled Miss Helen
Faucit's exquisite representation of those characters. The actor or
actress brings to the illustration of the great efforts of dramatic
genius, qualities of a different sort, _in addition_ to those which at
first pervaded the mind of the author, but not less essential to the
felicitous realization of his conception. Physical beauty, the magic of
voice, look, and manner, the play of countenance, the step of grace, the
witchery of love, the accents of despair, combine with the power of
language to add a tenfold attraction to the creations of fancy. All the
arts seem, in such representations, to combine their efforts to entrance
the mind, every avenue to the heart is at once flooded with the highest
and most refined enjoyment; the noblest, the most elevated feelings:--

"The youngest of the sister arts,
Where all their beauty blends!
For ill can poetry express
Full many a tone of thought sublime;
And painting, mute and motionless,
Steals but a glance of time.
But by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion's perfect triumphs come--
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And sculpture to be dumb."

That an art so noble as that of dramatic poetry, ennobled by such
genius, associated with such recollections, so lofty in its purpose, so
irresistible in its effects, should have fallen into comparative decline
in th